06272019 – Run

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After dropping the kids off I went for a run. The schedule called for a 4×8:00 nasal breathing only run.  I headed out North on West River Road and across the Lake Street bridge.  It has been forever since I’ve run on the River Roads.  I wouldn’t say I miss it, but it was nice to be back there. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this longer duration nasal breathing workout. Nasal breathing definitely limits the pace and these longer intervals weren’t hard but it does take a decent amount of focus. I got into a good rhythm and actually found it was harder to slow down for the 3 minute “recovery” intervals!  During each interval I covered about .87 miles and except for the first one which was .83 the rest were right at .87 or .88 miles.  So that’s good consistency and is just over 9:00 minute per mile pace. I ran most of the hill up from Lake Street towards Summit during a recovery interval and otherwise didn’t have any major hills to try and compensate for.  I ran down East River Road to the Ford Bridge and just before the bridge it started raining.  It was quite a front line coming across as you can see in the pictures! Running across the exposed bridge I got pretty wet, but overall the severe weather missed us and I didn’t seen any lightening during the run.  I finished out running back to the car along West River Road. I took a few minutes to stretch and recover under a covered area before getting into the van soaking wet!

All in all I covered 5.8 miles in 56:14.

06262019 – Swim

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I was able to get away to go to the Open Lap Swimming at Webber Pool today. They are open from 11am-1pm for open lap swimming while kids are there for lessons. I plan on using that later in the some for some more intense swim focus. I was the only one in the small lap pool. Webber is a natural swimming pool which means they don’t use chemicals to treat the water, but it is naturally filtered. That is why the water has a green tinge to it. The bottom and sides of the pool are also a little slimy. In the water though it is clear and seems pretty clean. The problem with this pool is that has been closed a lot if there is a heavy rain or if a little kid poops or something as it takes a long time to filter out the water. They’ve been working to make it better each year.

It felt good to be in the pool and I was able to swim further. I did 3×50, 3×100, and 3×50. It felt good overall. I was definitely feeling fatigue at the end, both muscle and cardio. I also worked on switching sides for breathing as that is a big weakness of mine for swimming. I was able to make it a length using my right (weak) side and even did a few lengths where I switched back and forth!

Overall I logged 700 yards. I’m not actually sure the length so I’ll ask next time I’m there.

06252019 – Bike

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The kids are signed up for enrichment programming through the school district and this week I ended up with 3 hours each morning without the kids. So of course I went out for a 3 hour bike ride! It was a little stressful to have a specific time to be back as I wanted to go a little bit further, but I made a smart decision and ended up getting back with a few minutes to cool down before going in to get the kids!

Because of where the kids were it made a lot of sense to head into St. Paul. I’ve done some of the route before, but had never been on the southeast part of the city where I know a lot of people like to ride. I probably should have done some more research to plan a good route, but it was also a little fun to just be out there and explore!

I went up the back side of the hill from Mendota to St Paul and Cherokee park and then down Ohio St. I was going to go back up it, but missed the turn and rode on city streets for a bit and eventually popped out on a bike trail.

I found a really cool trail that was tucked between the Mississippi River and a railroad. I was hoping to cross the river and ride back into St. Paul but the closest bridge was several miles away and I was at the mid point in my time. It probably would have worked out better than what I ended up doing. Sometimes though that comes back to get you later!

Randomly in South St. Paul I ran into this older gentleman who was riding an old steel road bike and he was doing good speed. He told me to tuck in and we rode together for a little bit and then chit chatted. He was heading to Target!

Once I got back onto Shepherd Road it was a headwind the entire ride back to Minneapolis.  Not really ideal, but I guess that meant I enjoyed a tailwind on the way over, right?

It was a perfect day to be out riding. It was also the first time on my Trek in a couple of years and it felt good to go fast on it!

The totals were 36.29 miles in 2:41.  Not bad for a Tuesday morning!

06242019 – CrossFit

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Yay, I made it back to Solcana and in the morning! I went for the 6:30am class as I didn’t have any specific reason to go to the 5:30. I still got to see a lot of my old friends finishing the workout!

After warming up we did 14 minutes to a heavy Turkish Get Up. This has to be one of the weirdest exercises ever! So many different steps to get from lying down to standing up. I started with a 5lb plate and moved up in 5lb intervals to a 35# kettlebell during the time allotted.

The MetCon portion of the workout was a partner WOD with alternating rounds of work. I did the workout with Martin and we used an 80# sandbag and I used the 35# kettlebell for American swings. It was a 13 minute workout of sandbag carry for maybe 100 yards and then 13 swings. We completed almost 9 rounds.

It felt great to be working out with other people!

06222019 – Bike

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After the family left, Caleb and I headed down to the trails. We went to the new skills course first to check it out. Its built right behind the Trailhead building and has 3 loops. We did the Easy loop first. I was going to try the Intermediate and Caleb was going to do the Easy but he accidentally started down the Intermediate and didn’t want to stop! He did great on it. He wanted to do the Easy again so he did that and I did the Intermediate. It was fun! We stopped for a quick water break and then headed over to the Karate Monkey loop. He does a great job!! His little legs work hard to keep the bike going up the hills! We did about 2.5 miles together.

A few hours later I was able to get out for a long mountain bike ride. I was actually able to complete the whole trail system (except Brownie). Brownie is RED – Expert so not for me. I did it once and did a lot of walking around obstacles. I hit the MORC trails first – skipping past the North Loop. I did a nice steady pace through all the sections and felt good riding through them and did a few of the harder sections I usually walk or struggle with! I hit the North Loop on the way back and then the Loppet trails. They were setting up for a race so the Area 36 trails were a little different than normal adding in some new things and skipping some others. The new 45 North trail is fully open and I rode it. It will be fun to do, though I was pretty tired at this point!

Total riding was 13.21 miles in 1:42.

Of the 26 Strava segments I got a medal on 14 of them!! 18 of them were PR efforts!! So that felt pretty awesome too!!